Black Spring

by Christina Henry

  Nathaniel’s hands disappeared inside the hole I had cut in Evangeline’s body. He could not disguise his horror as he touched the baby inside and pulled it out into the open air.

  It was terrible to behold, a nightmare made flesh. Lucifer and Evangeline’s child had been conceived in death, while Evangeline’s soul was on the other side of the Door. It was black as pitch and covered in the glop from Evangeline’s belly. At first all I could see were the tiny horns at the top of its head, and then other features became visible.

  Its limbs unfurled from its body as Nathaniel held it up. The legs were furry spider’s appendages, although it had six instead of eight. Wings unfolded from its back, articulated like a bat’s. The mouth was hidden in its blank, insectlike face, although it continued to make a kind of metallic keening noise. The eyes were not in the least bit human or angelic. They were large red orbs slightly off center, again reminiscent of a bug.

  Lucifer’s child was a hideous thing to look upon, and it was certainly carrying some power that would not be pleasant for any human that encountered this creature. I was seized by a wild impulse to grab the little monster and run to the nearest window and toss it out. Or maybe fly out over the ocean and drop it there. This wasn’t a baby, a child to be cherished and loved. This was a blight on the Earth, and I had helped bring it forth.

  Nathaniel still held the creature away from his body, his arms outstretched. “Someone must cut the cord.”

  “What? Oh, right,” I said, shaking my head. We had all fallen briefly under the spell of this thing, frozen in contemplation of its horrible form. “Jude, you’ve got that big knife handy.”

  I considered my duty done. I had delivered the damn thing, whether I wanted to or not. Let the others deal with the rest.

  Jude neatly sliced the umbilical cord so that the monster was separated from Evangeline. The creature made weak, struggling movements in Nathaniel’s hands.

  Now what do we do with it? Samiel said.

  “Find Lucifer,” I said. “It’s his kid. It’s his problem.”

  “Yeah, but what about this mess?” Beezle said, gesturing toward Evangeline’s body.

  I looked down at her, my many-greats-grandmother, the woman who had cast my fate centuries ago by falling in love with Lucifer in the first place. I felt a little sad for her. Could she have known that she was carrying this horrible thing inside her? Had she been dreaming of little fingers and toes, of soft downy hair and chubby cheeks?

  And would I suffer the same fate as she? My child, too, was born of the line of Lucifer, and my baby’s father had been the son of a nephilim. Those little wings I felt fluttering inside me—were they the wings of a monster?

  “I will take my son now, Nathaniel,” a voice said behind me, icy cold.

  I shifted on my knees, and saw Lucifer standing in the hallway, just a few feet away. I had not felt him approach, and I was slightly shocked that I had not. His eyes burned like starlight, and his magic was a palpable thing. Normally I could feel Lucifer’s power coming near.

  Nathaniel rose to his feet as the Morningstar stepped forward. Nathaniel’s shoulders were hunched in tension as he handed the kicking, mewling thing to Lucifer. My grandfather took the baby, looking down at it. The creature ceased making noise once it was in Lucifer’s arms. It seemed unnaturally aware, as though it knew it was with its parent. Lucifer’s face softened in a gross parody of fatherly affection.

  Nathaniel backed away from Lucifer to rejoin us. I came to my feet, as did Jude and Samiel. Evangeline’s body lay inside the circle we made, and all of us were studiously avoiding looking at it. The silence that hung over us was heavy and fraught with peril. None of us could predict what Lucifer would do, and we were all afraid of what might happen.

  For several moments Lucifer appeared to be communing with his offspring. Then he looked up, and snapped his fingers.

  Two flunkies appeared out of nowhere. They took the child from Lucifer without a word and disappeared back into the walls or wherever they had come from.

  Now Lucifer looked at the five of us—me, Beezle, Nathaniel, Jude and Samiel—and the body that was partially hidden by our feet.

  “I want to see her,” Lucifer said.

  We all moved aside. I glanced down at Evangeline—the stab wounds in her chest, the open cavity of her abdomen still leaking fluid, the gaping sockets where her eyes used to be. It was a horrifying sight.

  Lucifer walked to her body and crouched on the floor. He still wore the expensive suit he’d had on earlier in the evening but didn’t seem the least bit concerned about blood on his shoes or the cuffs of his pants.

  His face was a mask of stillness though his eyes burned bright. I could not tell, or guess, what he was thinking. Nor could I feel his emotion as I had done in the past.

  After a long while he stood, and gave each of us a measured look. “What has occurred here?”

  I explained what Nathaniel and I had heard, how we had found Evangeline dying outside our door, how we had been unable to save her but had saved the child at her request. Throughout my narrative Lucifer showed no emotion.

  When I was finished he said, “And none of you thought to investigate the area for her attacker? Did you not care that a murderer has managed to kill my fiancée in my own home?”

  “We were kind of preoccupied with trying to save her and the kid,” I said, my natural inclination to defy authority reasserting itself. It wasn’t fair of Lucifer to act like we’d somehow been negligent. “Where were you, anyway? How come she was up here all alone in the first place?”

  “I am not answerable to you, Granddaughter,” Lucifer said, and for a moment I felt the surge of his anger. Then he leashed it again, and I realized how tightly he held himself in check. He was saving his wrath for the culprit, and when he found whoever had killed Evangeline, there would quite literally be hell to pay.

  “However,” Lucifer continued. “I will tell you that I do not know why Evangeline was here. Perhaps she wished to speak with you.”

  “In the middle of the night?” I asked.

  “You and your party are among only a few guests who have retired. Many others remain awake. It is not unthinkable that Evangeline would think she could approach you at this hour,” Lucifer said.

  “I can’t imagine that we would have much to talk about,” I muttered, but Lucifer heard me.

  “I realize you and Evangeline had quite a difficult history, but I requested that she attempt to make amends with you for my sake,” Lucifer said. “After all, you are both precious to me. She may have decided not to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Or maybe it had nothing to do with me at all,” I said. I started to say, “Maybe she was meeting someone else,” but didn’t think that would sound too good.

  It implied that either she was cheating on Lucifer (unlikely) or she was up to some nefarious plot, and I don’t think Lucifer would believe his darling Evangeline capable of such a thing.

  He seemed oddly naïve about her. Evangeline would never in a million years have shown up in the middle of the night to apologize to me. She might have come looking for me to threaten me, or to make sure I understood the order of things now that she was to marry Lucifer. But to “make amends”? Never.

  I’m not sure I would have accepted her apology in any case. I tend to get unreasonable when people try to possess me from beyond the grave and use me as a tool of their will.

  “Whatever she was doing here, someone took advantage and murdered her,” Lucifer said. “I intend to find that person and punish them.”

  “How are you going to do that?” I said. “There are dozens of guests here. You have servants and whoever else normally lives with you. Plus, most of the creatures you invited to your wedding are magical and know very well how to hide their tracks.”

  “But not from me,” another voice said.

  My eyebrows rose to my hairline as Puck appeared behind his brother. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Your room isn’t on this floor.�
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  “Not happy to see me, niece?” Puck said, but the merriment that usually danced in his eyes was banked.

  “Why would I be?” I said. Nathaniel put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it in warning.

  Puck ignored me and turned to Lucifer. “As you know, I can see into the past. There will be no need to interrogate the entire household. I can show you what happened and you will be able to identify the culprit.”

  “How can you do that?” Jude asked.

  “With a wave of my hand and some pixie dust,” Puck said offhandedly. “How it works is really none of your business. But the fact remains that I can do it.”

  “Yes, he can,” I said, thinking of the way Puck had “animated” the lost tribe on that faraway planet, a race of faerie dead for centuries. “He can show the past, but he can also manipulate it.”

  “How do we know that you will not show Lucifer some trick?” Nathaniel asked. “You could use this as an opportunity to present an enemy of yours in a bad light.”

  “Worried I’ll put my own offspring on the chopping block, dear boy?” Puck said.

  “You’ve done it before,” I replied. He’d killed Bendith, Nathaniel’s half brother, just to set me up for the fall. He knew I would have to get rid of Titania, Bendith’s mother, whose rage knew no bounds. And because I had killed her to defend myself, he was now free from the chains that had bound him to the Faerie queen for centuries.

  I knew Puck was angry that I had “ruined” Nathaniel, whom he had designed as a kind of walking time bomb to assassinate Lucifer at some future point. This would be the perfect opportunity for Puck to clear the board of me or Nathaniel or both.

  I turned to Lucifer. “He can show you the past, but I wouldn’t necessarily trust it.”

  “I know quite well what my brother is capable of,” Lucifer said, his voice cold as winter. “You and Nathaniel have nothing to fear as long as you have done no wrong.”

  That wasn’t true. Titania hadn’t believed a word I’d said despite my protestations that I’d had nothing to do with Bendith’s death. The murder looked like I could have committed it, and I was on the spot when it happened. Therefore it was my fault.

  Now Evangeline was dead outside my door, and I was covered in her blood. No matter what Puck showed us, I had a feeling things were not going to end well for me. Somehow I was always blamed when things started to go wrong.

  Puck waved us away from Evangeline’s body. We all moved to one side, even Lucifer. Puck held his hands over her for a moment, murmuring quietly.

  At first nothing seemed to be happening. Jude shifted restlessly against the wall, his nose sniffing the air.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell. It may be the shifter.”

  “Silence,” Lucifer said, and Jude and I ceased our whispering.

  Then, suddenly, Evangeline seemed to rise a few inches from the floor. Everything that had occurred in the hallway happened in reverse, as real as if we were watching a live performance. We saw Nathaniel remove the baby (which looked even more horrible the second time around), saw me cut Evangeline’s stomach open (also not particularly pleasant on review). Since the “film” was running backward, it looked like we all went into our bedrooms instead of coming out of them, and Evangeline crawled the wrong way down the hallway, away from our doors. At the end of the hallway, near the windows, Evangeline came to her feet.

  A second figure materialized in the frame. Someone in a dark cloak stabbed her, a shiny silver knife sliding into her chest over and over. Evangeline struggled, throwing her arms out. The figure stepped away from her, back into the shadows. Just before the figure disappeared, the face under the hood turned toward our end of the hallway.

  It was my face under the hood.

  Of course it was.

  13

  I sighed. “Seriously. You could have predicted that would happen.”

  I expected Lucifer to dismiss what he had seen out of hand, or turn on Puck and accuse him of manipulating the memory of what had happened here. But he did neither of those things. Instead, he turned on me with a look so cold and frightening that I took a step back.

  “I thought you did protest too much, Granddaughter,” Lucifer said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You believe all that? You think I killed Evangeline? Why? I have enough aggravation without adding on a murder rap.”

  “We all witnessed it,” Lucifer said. “My eyes have told me the truth.”

  “Your eyes have lied to you, or he has,” I said, pointing at Puck.

  Puck shook his head. He looked at me with speculation and, I thought, surprise. “I have done nothing to change what happened here, niece.”

  “And you believe him?” I said to Lucifer. “You do know what he’s been up to for the last few months, don’t you?”

  “Puck cannot lie to me,” Lucifer said.

  “Since when?” I said.

  “Since always,” Puck said. “We cannot speak or show falsehoods to one another. It is a price of our magic.”

  “Madeline could not have done this,” Nathaniel said. “She was with me for the duration of the evening. She never left the bedroom.”

  “We are all aware that you would lie for Madeline,” Lucifer said. “It is the natural instinct of the protector.”

  “Yeah, and how did I get in and out of the bedroom without anyone seeing?” I asked.

  “There are paths in these walls, just as in Amarantha’s home,” Lucifer said. “And you discovered those easily enough.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “Just how closely do you watch me?”

  “Closely enough,” Lucifer said.

  “Then you should know I didn’t kill Evangeline,” I said.

  “I was not watching earlier this evening,” Lucifer said smoothly. “I had guests to attend to.”

  “It was the shifter,” Jude said. I could tell that he was strongly resisting the urge to pick a fight with Lucifer. He had a grudge against the Morningstar to begin with, and now Lucifer was casting aspersions on my character.

  “Damn right,” I said. “And it framed me for the third time.”

  “What shifter do you speak of?” Lucifer asked.

  Nathaniel, Jude and I fell over one another trying to explain about the shifter and what it had been up to—how it had slaughtered one of the Retrievers, how it had murdered Chloe, how it had betrayed and hunted Jude’s pack.

  Lucifer listened, his expression unchanged. “And you say this creature is something created by Alerian? How is it I have not heard of it if this shapeshifter was formed to fight me and my armies?”

  “Daharan said that he made Alerian destroy the creatures. I don’t know why you never heard about them. You can take it up with Daharan and Alerian,” I said. “And Alerian claims that the current iteration has nothing to do with him.”

  Lucifer appeared deep in thought, brooding. He snapped his fingers and another servant appeared at the end of the hall.

  “How does that work?” I said. “Do they lurk just out of sight or do you have little portals for them to use to walk through the walls?”

  My grandfather only gave me another icy glare. It was shocking that he was taking all this so seriously. Not Evangeline’s death—of course he would take that seriously, especially if he truly loved her as much as he seemed to. But I couldn’t believe he was actually considering the possibility that I had been the one to harm her.

  He told the magically appearing servant to fetch Alerian. He also gave instructions for the removal of Evangeline’s body and the cleanup of the hallway. A second servant appeared while he was speaking to the first.

  “Search Madeline’s room for a black cloak or a large knife,” Lucifer said.

  My indignation was growing by the minute. “There won’t be anything in there. And even if there is something in there, do you know how freaking easy it is to plant a murder weapon? Don’t you ever watch TV?”

&nb
sp; “No,” Lucifer said shortly.

  “Well, Beezle watches a ton of it, and I’ve picked some stuff up by osmosis over the years,” I said.

  “Again, the protestations,” Lucifer said, his voice silky. “As I said, you will have nothing to worry about if you have actually done nothing.”

  “I have done nothing, and yet I’m still getting worried,” I said. “Because you’re obstinately refusing to listen to reason.”

  Lucifer turned on me then, his eyes blazing like the sun. “I am still master in my own house, Granddaughter. Whatever leniency I had allowed you in the past will not be considered if you are Evangeline’s killer. My justice will be swift and absolute.”

  I covered my stomach with my hands, an unconscious gesture that drew Lucifer’s gaze there.

  “My grandson will not be harmed, of course,” he said. “But you will certainly suffer.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “It sounds like you’ve already decided.”

  He turned his back on me then, saying nothing.

  I knew I shouldn’t have come to this damned wedding. I should have stayed at home and taken whatever consequences came with ignoring Lucifer’s invitation. Anything would be better than being trapped in his house, at his mercy.

  The only way we would get out of here was if Nathaniel and I joined our powers and blasted the whole place into oblivion. And even then it was a certainty that Lucifer and Alerian and Puck would put aside their differences to stop us. The resulting boom would probably look a lot like a nuclear apocalypse, and a lot of innocent people would be killed in the process. Lucifer might not care about those innocents, but I did.

  It came as no surprise when Lucifer’s flunky emerged from my bedroom holding a bloody cloak and a knife covered in rust-colored stains.

  “I’m being railroaded,” I said to Nathaniel as Lucifer turned to me in triumph, the cloak and knife clutched in his fists. I felt strangely dazed about the whole thing. It seemed as if it had all been planned from the start.